Tech layoffs climb as Uber sacks thousands of employees

The latest wave of tech layoffs has washed up at San Francisco-headquartered Uber. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced Wednesday in a letter to employees that the company is sacking 10% of its global workforce.

Read more ‘Good portion’ of Bay Area to see rain thanks to early season storm

Though Uber did not disclose exactly how many positions were cut, the ride-hailing company wrote in an annual report filed in February that it had around 34,000 employees as of the end of last year. The cuts mark its largest round of layoffs in more than six years, Bloomberg reported.

Khosrowshahi said the layoffs targeted roles “primarily focused on coordination.” The company is downsizing its middle management by 20%, with the goal of “a simpler org chart geared toward building versus managing.”  

“The changes we’re making today are designed to do two things: make Uber simpler and faster, and create more capacity to invest in our future,” Khosrowshahi said. “A leaner organization will mean clearer ownership, faster decisions, and more time spent building rather than coordinating.”

Perhaps the biggest change is the company’s doubling down on its hybrid policy. Only 1% of positions will continue to be remote roles. The rest will be required to move to the office, and the majority will be concentrated in the company’s major hub cities — New York and San Francisco. 

Read more Calaveras County supervisor candidate dies while door-knocking

Uber did not respond to questions from SFGATE about the job titles and locations of the laid-off workers. As of Wednesday afternoon, the company had not filed a WARN with California officials announcing the local scope of the layoffs. 

Following the publication of Khosrowshahi’s letter, laid-off workers took to LinkedIn to announce their news. Peter Tran, a software engineer at the company in Toronto said he was impacted.

“Today, Uber promoted me to customer. It’s not the career move I had planned, but here we are,” Tran wrote on LinkedIn. “It came as a shock to me and I’m sure to many others on my team/org. Navigating re-orgs and market-shifts is part of the professional journey, and honestly I don’t [take] these decisions personally.”